


Not By Right

by hellscabanaboy



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Branding, Dubious Consent, M/M, The power and benevolence of the shogunate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 20:48:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2164647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellscabanaboy/pseuds/hellscabanaboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every moment that Mitsunari fails to resist the touch makes him complicit. But he’s never had the power to take back anything Ieyasu has claimed as his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not By Right

The brand stands out in livid red across Mitsunari’s chest. The newly healed flesh is still puffy and raw, but the lines of Ieyasu’s mon are clear and stark against the white skin. The hot, sick anger roiling inside him over the long weeks of healing settles impotently in his belly at the sight. It looks unreal now, distant, as though submitting to Ieyasu’s mark really has made the flesh that bears it no longer his own.

The anger comes at Ieyasu’s satisfied laugh as he draws Mitsunari’s robe from his shoulder to reveal the mark. He hasn’t changed over the years; he’s bulkier than he used to be, dressed in crisp robes of state instead of his old armor, but that ingratiating smile remains the same. So do his hands, too soft and too warm as he reaches out to explore the raised lines.

The damaged flesh is still raw enough to burn at the probing touches, but Mitsunari doesn’t flinch, no more than when he was brought before Ieyasu to have it made. It’s the charade of kindness that galls him. Ieyasu admires what he’s wrought with as tender an expression as he had ever worn when he used to slip into Mitsunari’s futon, no less familiar now that he knows the deceit that lies behind it.

Every moment that he fails to resist the touch makes him complicit. But he’s never had the power to take back anything Ieyasu has claimed as his own.

So he doesn’t resist, either, when Ieyasu leans in to press his lips to Mitsunari’s own. Any protest he could make would be merely a supplicant’s plea, any resistance a futile attempt to protect his own worthless dignity. So he sits still and rigid as the fury pounds through his veins, clings to it as Ieyasu rests his head against his shoulder like a lover.

"Mitsunari," says the shogun, hushed and beseeching as though it were him who were the supplicant. "Thank you. For coming back to me."

As though it had ever been his choice.

Ieyasu’s hands leave off their exploration of the mark to slip further under Mitsunari’s robe. He presses his lips to the knobs of Mitsunari’s spine, trails his fingers lovingly across the jutting hipbones. Mitsunari finds his body reacting to the caresses, the flesh claimed by the shogun responding as the shogun wills it.

He can’t hold back a choked cry as Ieyasu’s fingers wrap gently around the head of his cock. It’s hardly the first treachery he’s been guilty of, here, nor the worst, but his voice sounds a foreign thing in his ears all the same.

"Tell me you permit this," Ieyasu whispers into the crease of Mitsunari’s shoulder.

It’s an insult in itself to ask such a thing now, so far too late to make any difference at all. To act as though his refusal means anything now is merely to make a mockery of what has already been done to him. Ieyasu knows as well as he that there’s nowhere else for him to go, no other lord left to serve, no other bond to rely on. Only Edo, and the shogunate, and Ieyasu.

It’s meaningless to deny in words the betrayal enacted with his body.

"I consent," he replies.

He doesn’t speak a word further until Ieyasu’s through with him. But still he gives voice to his treachery with the cries he can’t hold back: the hoarse groan as long unused muscles stretch to let Ieyasu press inside; the pained gasp when those warm fingers scrape hard across the lines of the brand, nearly drowned out by Ieyasu’s own moan of satisfaction.

By the time he finally rocks forward and comes harder than he has in years into the shogun’s waiting hand, all he can do is sob.


End file.
